In the Event That Everything Should Go Wrong
by RazedRainbow
Summary: It was a night fueled by alcohol, and the desire for love. It was a day fueled by coffee, and the desire for answers. This is a story about what happens when egos collide. This is a romantic comedy, with little in the way of romance...
1. A Punchline Without the Setup

Cold tile is one of the many things one does not wish to wake up on. This is especially true if the frigidness of the floor is intensified by sore joints, and a throbbing headache. The uncomfortableness is tripled, if there is a distinct taste of stale alcohol hanging in the back of one's mouth. Trixie despised that she could say that she knew this feeling well, but she had never really done anything to stop herself from feeling it either. She could say the same about a lot of the things she had done in her life.

She threw her hoof wildly, trying to get a sense of her location without having to expose her eyes to whatever blinding light she may be near. She swung her hoof violently to her right, and heard the distinct clanking of a glass bottle sliding across a ceramic floor. These two hints gave away where she was: Her kitchen. While the number of kitchens in the city of Fillydelphia with ceramic tiled floors numbered in the thousands, the only one she could see herself passing out on was her own. Whenever she passed out in the house of another, she would always wake up on the sofa: Felt lining had become a very close acquaintance of hers over the past year.

Testing her luck, she placed both of her forelegs beneath her body, and slowly lifter herself. She found that she could hold her weight well enough, and gingerly lifted her hind legs, easing her way into a standing position. She raised a good five inches before stumbling into a nearby counter, her face barely missing the edge of the wooden top. She was lucky that she relied heavily on paper plates and plastic cups: She heard several of them clamor against the floor, but none of them shattered. Leaning against the counter, she avowed that she had drank too much, and promised whatever higher-power was listening, that she would never again consume the monstrous poison. Deep inside, Trixie knew that she would be making this same exact vow in a week's time, but it still gave her some solace: Then again that sense of serenity may have just been the remnants of gin whispering sweet nothings into her ear. Taking a chance, she opened her eyes, and was pleasantly surprised to find that, while she was indeed, in her apartment, the curtains had been drawn. She let her eyes say their thanks, before heading out of the kitchen, tripping over an empty bottle.

In her partially-drunken haze, she managed to stumble to her bathroom. After relieving herself of the demons of the previous night, she trotted over to the mirror, using the base of the sink as a crutch. She looked like a nightmare, as was to be expected after a forgotten night. Her silver mane was strewn about at angles she didn't think were possible, and her blue face was still partially covered in smudged stage-makeup. Black circles hung beneath her eyes, and her pupils were still glassy. Using her magic proved to be a painful task, and brushing her mane took significantly longer than it usually took. Satisfied with her appearance, Trixie left the bathroom, walking in a much straighter line than she had when she entered.

Her apartment was on the small side, and she could get from room-to-room (all three of them) in only two steps. The earnings of a vaudevillian performer were not enough to purchase a luxurious penthouse, or even an average apartment. After her traveling show had been ruined by an incident in a backwoods, hicktown called Ponyville, she had attempted to start over in Manehattan, but found that even the most rundown of tenements were very rough on her coin purse. It got to the point where she had to choose between living in a dilapidated, drug-lord-run apartment complex in a crime-ridden neighborhood, or leaving the city in it's entirety. She chose the latter, and had wound up settling down in Fillydelphia. It wasn't Manehattan, but it was a paycheck, and the monthly-fees for her apartment were far easier to take: At least in Filly she could afford food.

She entered her minuscule bedroom, and found it to be exactly as she had left it: A mess. Trixie was definitely one to keep her image pristine, but that spotlessness only applied to her own physical appearance. Her apartment was typically a mess, mainly because she spent twelve hours a day performing magic-routines in hole-in-the-wall theatres and on random street corners. She would then spend around two hours drinking, and six hours doing Celestia knows what. All in all, her total time spent within her house on any given day was around four hours- five hours on the weekend, if she was lucky. Still, despite all the cons, she was still receiving just as much attention as she had before the Ponyville incident, and that was more than enough to satisfy her.

At some point during the night, she had removed her trademark hat and cape, and tossed them on the bed, adding them to the mountain range of muddled cloth that spanned the entirety of the mattress. Letting out a sigh, she levitated the hat and cape off of the bed, hung them properly on a nearby stand, and straightened them out. The faint sound of rustling cloth could be heard in the room, but Trixie ignored it, assuming it was just the sound of the fabric ironing out. However, her curiosity and fear peaked when the rustling continued after she had seized using her magic. She gulped, turned around, and slapped a hoof against her face.

'_Damn it, Trixie! Again?'_

Jutting out from beneath her zebra print sheets, was a long, toned hind leg. It was obvious why it was there, and it was obvious what had happened the night before. Trixie grunted to herself; this was a process she had repeated ad nauseam, and she was getting tired of it. Still, she couldn't help but give her alter-ego a pat on the back: From what she could tell, it had managed to make a decent selection in the midst of her drunken stupor. She wasn't sure if there was a number for the amount of times she had taken some sort of hideous beast back to her apartment after a night of partying: How she hadn't developed some sort of disease, or gotten an unwanted pregnancy was a miracle in itself. The new suitor she had dragged in seemed to be a better looker than her previous flings: Even if this particular pony had a face covered in boils, there would at least be a decent set of legs to look at.

Judging by the muscular structure of the leg, Trixie concluded that she must have dragged in a stallion, and an athletic one at that. Once again, she found herself punching the back of her own head. She had definitely been too drunk the night before to perform any pregnancy-prevention spells, and she was pretty sure that this stallion hadn't bothered with putting on any sort of protection. She could barely feed one mouth: Having another mouth to feed, be it a child, or even a child and husband, would surely lead to starvation. Not to mention the fact that a pregnant magician throwing up into her hat due to morning sickness, isn't exactly what spectators want to see when they go to a magic show. She told herself to look at the positives, but she could find none.

It took all of her will to walk up to the bed, leaving her courage tank empty by the time her shaking hoof was hovering above the pile of sheets. There were some veils that she didn't want to remove, and this was one of them. She wanted to just ignore the presence, but at the same time she wanted to know. She took a deep breath, and began coaxing herself.

'_Trixie, you've done this how many times? It's going to be just like every other time. You'll both awkwardly stare at each other for a few minutes, and then they'll show themselves to the door, and that will be that.'_

Her confidence refilled rapidly, and the blue unicorn threw back the sheets, to reveal...

Another pile of sheets.

She let out a miniature roar, and ripped back the next set of sheets.

Her magenta eyes grew in horror.

Squinted, rose eyes stared back at hers, and went equally wide once they processed what they were staring at. Rainbow-mane flew in all directions ,as she shook her head widely, refusing to believe what she was seeing.

Their voices rang out simultaneously, each cracking note spelling out a single word.

"_**You?"**_


	2. Cross the Line, One Innuendo at a Time

It was half-past eight in the morning, and Trixie's dining room table had turned into the opening panel of a comic strip. At the table, Rainbow Dash sat in silence, slumped down as low as she could possibly go. Her neck was craned back, and her hooves were covering her face in a desperate attempt to hide from the inescapable truth. Eight feet away, at the kitchen counter, Trixie was pouring coffee into the only non-plastic cup she owned. It was a mug, short in size, but large in diameter, and the front of it was emblazoned with the pristine face of the mug's owner. Trixie was usually one to drink her coffee with half of a container of creamer poured into it: You could say that she drank cream, with a shot of coffee somewhere within the substance. This morning, however, she was drinking pure, jet-black coffee. She was already feeling the hangover setting in, and she was going to stop it before it led to her retching over the bathroom toilet for hours on end.

She levitated the mug in the air and placed it on the table. She looked at the pegasus across the table, and cringed. Five seconds. That was the amount of time that they had interacted with each other in Ponyville, and Trixie was positive that neither one of them enjoyed even a millisecond of that time. In fact, before unwrapping her morning surprise, Trixie had forgotten that the cocky mare had even existed. Ponyville had simply turned into a thorn in Trixie's side: A misstep on a path that, before these events, was finally coming back to her. Yesterday, her cadences were ringing out with clarity, and peace of mind. Now, they were just a slurred mess of muddled allusions and four-letter words.

"Sweet Celestia, I've got such a headache. Gimme a cup of that joe, will ya?" Rainbow Dash moaned, her hooves still clasped tightly over her bloodshot eyes.

"No. There is but one mug in this apartment, and it is _mine_. If you wish to have something to drink, you will have to drink it out of one of my other cups."

"All the other cups in here are plastic!" Rainbow's hooves had fallen away from her open, glaring eyes, and her pupils darted from cup to cup, finding nothing but red, dimestore containers.

"And?"

"I can't drink out of those! They'd totally destroy my hooves. Just let me drink out of yours."

"No. My house, my mug, my rules."

"C'mon. I'll drink on the other side. Ya won't get any cooties or anything."

"My house. My mug."

"Just a sip-"

"**Trixie's mug!"**

"Alright, alright. Settle down, earthquake, I was askin' politely."

"And I. Was politely. Declining." Trixie sputtered out her answer in shaking breaths. Four sentences, and the pegasus was already chipping away at her composure.

"Fine, fine. Whatever you want." Rainbow crossed her arms, and hovered out of her chair. She made it two wing-beats before collapsing onto the floor, swearing and clasping her temples. She walked the rest of the way to the counter, and briefly trotted out of Trixie's sight. The unicorn used this brief solace to reflect and reckon- although, with the clamoring of Rainbow's rummaging, she could barely keep her mind clear enough to think.

'_What the hell happened last night? I mean, I don't even remember touching a single glass, and yet my mouth feels like it took a swim in Whiskey Lake. Hmm, now that I think about it, I don't even remember__**anything**__ after my performance! And, apparently, she doesn't remember what happened either. Could I have- No. Nononono, that couldn't have happened. No, there's got to be a better explanation. Ugh, I could find the answer if I could remember the damn problem. I mean, there's a chance that we could have-. That would explain the memory loss, but come on, Trixie. No matter how many drinks you had, you would never reach such a low point that you would actually have se-'_

"**What are you doing?"**

Rainbow Dash was leaning over the table, her wings brushing against Trixie's face. She had her lips curled around a straw, which she had inserted into Trixie's coffee in the midst of the unicorn's soliloquy. She took a large swig, in shock, when she realized that she had been caught, and immediately spat the boiling hot liquid all over the table- knocking over the cup in the process. The pegasus dropped to the floor, and began to fan her burning mouth, while her streaming tears mixed with the pooling puddle of spilt coffee. Trixie mourned her toppled, ceramic shrine to her likeness.

"If there is so much as a chip in my beautiful mug, your plot is blot."

"That's what you get for screwing with the Dash. I just wanted some coffee." the pegasus tried to sound aggressive, but couldn't keep a small whimper from escaping her scalded lips.

Trixie rose from her chair, making sure to "accidentally" give Rainbow a slight kick as she walked back to the counter. She reached the pot, only to find that just two drops of the caffeinated liquid were left. She gritted her teeth, and punched herself mentally for only making enough coffee for a single cup. Her morning routine had been manipulated enough, as is: To lose the one thing that kept her nausea at bay was unacceptable.

'_You may take my virginity, but you will never take my coffee_.' she swore to herself. The former part of that comment was completely mendacious, and Trixie knew it, but the statement felt appropriate all the same.

She trotted briskly over to her couch, and retrieved her saddlebag. Her earnings may not have been much, but desperate times call for desperate measures, and if Trixie didn't get her coffee soon, a cabbage stand, somewhere in the vicinity of the world, would be destroyed in a fit of telekinetic rage. She threw the blue top of her sequin-encrusted, custom-made saddlebag open, peered inside to look at it's contents, and threw up on the floor.

'_My Luna. The smell.'_

As she lay on the ground, gagging at the repulsive stench, a grinning pegasus quietly strolled up behind her. If Trixie could see the brightness of the smirk on Rainbow Dash's face, she would have teleported the cyan mare straight to the Moon, but her eyes were clenched and watering, the odor of the contents of her bags setting every strand of cilia in her nostrils ablaze. The smell had yet to reach Rainbow Dash.

"Well, well, well. Looks like the little princess is ruining her own red carpet. What's the matter, oh "Great and Powerful Trixie"? Don't like the taste of your own medicine? You- **Oh, Horseapples!**

Rainbow Dash shot back from the force with enough speed to break the sound barrier. Unlike Trixie, the contents of Dash's stomach had been emptied long before (Trixie made the pegasus swear that she would buy her new sheets), but that did nothing to cease her gagging. The ever-spinning carousel of confusion was reaching it's terminal velocity, and neither mare knew how to slow it down. The "waking up in the same room" thing as awkward, yet slightly bearable. The "contents of the saddlebag" thing was the straw, or in this case, the straw, glasses, and Celestia knows what, that broke the camel's back.

Catching her breath, and sticking her cape in front of her nose, Trixie arose, and looked back into the saddlebag. The smell still burned her eyes, but she was still able to peer in, and get a better look at the contents. She used her telekinesis to retrieve her beer-doused coin purse, and placed it on the sofa table, drops of stale bear staining it's wooden finish. The coin purse was the only normal thing within the void of stitched cloth.

If she shook the bag, she could hear the sloshing of Celestia knows what in the bottom of the bag. The normally light-blue body of the bag, was now a dark shade of navy-blue, and Trixie could feel her coat dampen a little more each time the cloth touched it. Inside, were the remnants of a night one longs to, and never will, forget.

There were five empty bottles of bourbon, seven half-empty (or half-full if you're an optimist) bottles of bourbon, two gin bottles (one empty, one nearly full), a convenience store tequila that hadn't been touched, two pints of souring cookie dough ice cream, multiple bottles with scratched off labels, and so on. While these objects were the source of the repugnant odor, they were not what made the hairs on the back of Trixie's neck stand up.

Hidden within the recesses of the ruined bag, was a collection of pure horror. Leather clothing and misshapen contraptions, the likes of which Trixie had only seen in the costume room of a certain "club" she had worked at for all of one week. She knew what they were, and she knew what they meant. She gulped, and looked over her shoulder at Rainbow Dash, who was standing across the room, her head cocked in confusion. Trixie hoped that the two of them had simply gone to some sort of heavy metal concert that night, and gotten drunk, and ended up at the same house: No harm, no foul. However, Trixie knew that her closet was lacking a "leather" section, and she was sure that, even in a blackout-drunk state, she wouldn't let a pony like Rainbow Dash even think of putting monstrosities like the ones she was staring at in her bag. There were receipts scattered throughout the bag, soaked with alcohol. Trixie shivered: _'Looks like I did some shopping last night.' _

Then she saw it: The final piece of the puzzle, the cog that, whence inserted, would churn her mind to madness. By the time that she had turned around to face the pegasus, her coat was as pale as her mane, and her eyes were wide enough to eclipse the Sun. Rainbow Dash was, needless to say, confused by the unicorn's state.

"Jeez, Trixie. Ya look like you've seen a ghost."

The unicorn just kept staring, her heartbeat audible from across the room. Rainbow's heartbeat was reaching an equal decibel level, and she found herself studying the nearby window, attempting to guess how many life-threatening cuts she would receive from busting through it. Her final estimation was three, which was two more than she'd like to have, so she chose to stay, knowing she would regret it.

"What's up, Trixie?" The pegasus attempted to add a confident chuckle into her sentence, but it just came off as a nervous jitter- which it was.

"Okay, seriously, what's wrong?"

Again, the unicorn did not respond, choosing to levitate the abhorrent totem of libido in front of the mare's eyes. Rainbow Dash studied the peg for a few minutes, her mind not fully processing what she was looking at.

"What is it? A stick? What's so disturbing about a stick? Looks kinda like some sort of microphone to me. Maybe a-"

The light bulb in her head lit up, and shattered with her mind, in perfect synchronicity.

"Oh, you've gotta be fucking kidding me.


End file.
